Having studied at Crystal Palace School of Art and the Royal Academy 1897-1900, Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale began to specialise in illustration. She regularly exhibited watercolours, based on themes or texts, which were then published as illustrated books. This scene of Guinevere, the wife of King Arthur and lover of Sir Lancelot, was published as the last plate of Tennyson's 'Idylls of the King' (1911). The queen is shown in repentant nun's habit, striving to be a model of good womanhood - one of the most topical, on-going debates surrounding woman in pre-First World War Britain. BMAG has a letter from Eleanor Fortesque Brickdale to Mr Kaines Smith discussing her help in acquiring Byam Shaw's painting 'The Boer War' (25 Jan 1925) .